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Ever since the Dale decision, the Cradle of Liberty Council (Philadelphia, PA) has been attempting to satisfy both the National Council and its local community. In 2003, it attempted to abide by the community's standards
by adopting a policy of non-discrimination, which allegedly prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and religious belief. Pressure from the National Council resulted in them renouncing their recently adopted policy.
For more information, click here.
The council's very public embrace of the National Council's discrimination policies forced the City of Philadelphia to review its $1/year lease to the
council for prime real restate for its offices. Since the council was a private religious youth organization who provided services to residents and acknowledged that they discriminated on the basis of religious belief and sexual
orientation, the city felt it could not subsidize such unlawful discrimination. The city obtained an appraisal of the land and asked the council to pay the fair market rental rate of $200,000 per year. The council refused and for 3 years
negotiations between the council and the city were held. The city council in 2007 terminated the lease with the council and gave the council until June 1, 2008 to either pay the fair market rate or leave.
In May 2008, the council sued the city of Philadelphia.
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Boy Scouts sue Phila. to stay in headquarters
May 27, 2008
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The Boy Scouts of America's Philadelphia chapter has sued the City of
Philadelphia in federal court to block the city's May 31 deadline for the scouts to open membership to gays and atheists, or vacate their historic 1928 headquarters off Logan Square.
The civil rights lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Center City, contends that the city's ultimatum violates the scouts' rights under the U.S. and Pennsylvania Constitutions.
"The City has imposed an unconstitutional condition upon Cradle of Liberty's receipt of a benefit that Cradle of Liberty has enjoyed for nearly eight decades, and
that many other organizations that limit members or services to members of a particular group continue to enjoy without punishment or the threat of punishment," the scouts' lawsuit reads.
City Solicitor Shelley R. Smith said the city would respond to the federal lawsuit and would likely file an eviction motion next week.
In the meantime, Smith added, the beginning of litigation would preserve the status
quo pending a court ruling. Until that ruling occurs, Smith said, the scouts will be able to continue using the headquarters building.
The suit asks the court to permanently block city officials from attempting to evict
the Scouts from their building, which sits on a half-acre of city land at 22d and Winter Streets.
The Cradle of Liberty Council's predicament is one that has faced local scouting
councils nationwide since a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case the scouts won.
The national organization appealed the ruling in a suit filed by an openly gay New Jersey scout barred from serving as a troop leader.
Scouts must swear an oath "to God and my country" and to "obey the Scout Law" that includes keeping oneself "physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight."
In 2000 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that the scouts are a private group and thus have the right of "expressive association" under the First Amendment to set their own membership rules.
The legal victory was short-lived as municipal officials nationwide began reexamining longstanding relationships with local scouts. Unlike the scouts, local public officials were bound by another line of Supreme Court opinions that barred
taxpayer support for any private group that discriminates. Other mainstream supporters, such as United Way, also dropped them.
Last October, after several years of sporadic talks between city and council, the city
imposed the May 31 deadline: Change your membership rules, vacate the building, or pay a fair market rent of $200,000.
The scouts have maintained that they cannot change their membership policies
without being ejected by the national scout organization and cannot afford the rent.
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Boy Scouts Lose Philadelphia Lease in Gay-Rights Fight
By IAN URBINA
December 6, 2007
New York Times
PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 4 — For three years the Philadelphia council of the Boy Scouts of America held its ground. It resisted the city's request to change its
discriminatory policy toward gay people despite threats that if it did not do so, the city would evict the group from a municipal building where the Scouts have resided practically rent free since 1928.
Hailed as the birthplace of the Boy Scouts, the Beaux Arts building is the seat of the seventh-largest chapter of the organization and the first of the more than 300
council service centers built by the Scouts around the country over the past century.
But over the years the fight between the city and the Scouts was about more than this grandiose structure in Center City.
Municipal officials said the clash stemmed from a duty to defend civil rights and an obligation to abide by a local law that bars taxpayer support for any group that
discriminates. Boy Scout officials said it was about preserving their culture, protecting the right of private organizations to remain exclusive and defending
traditions like requiring members to swear an oath of duty to God and prohibiting membership by anyone who is openly homosexual.
This week the Boy Scouts made their last stand and lost.
"At the end of the day, you can not be in a city-owned facility being subsidized by the taxpayers and not have language in your lease that talks about nondiscrimination," said City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke, who represents the
district where the building is located. "Negotiations are over."
Mr. Clarke said talks ended this week when the deadline passed for the local chapter to change its policy; on June 1 the group will be evicted.
"Since we were founded, we believe that open homosexuality would be inconsistent with the values that we want to communicate with our leaders," said Gregg Shields,
national spokesman for the Boy Scouts. "A belief in God is also mentioned in the Scout oath. We believe that those values are important. Tradition is important. Our
mission is to instill those values in scouts and help them make good choices over their lifetimes."
In 2000, the Supreme Court decided a case — Boy Scouts of America v. Dale —
involving an openly gay scout from New Jersey who was barred from serving as troop leader. The court ruled in a 5-to-4 decision that, as a private organization, the group had a First Amendment right to set its membership rules.
The issue became a local concern in Philadelphia in May 2003 when the national Boy Scouts held their annual meeting in the city. During the conference, a local
scout challenged the organization's policies by announcing on television that he was gay and that he was a devoted member of the organization. He was promptly dismissed by the local chapter, which is called the Cradle of Liberty Council.
Municipal officials drew the line at the Beaux Arts building because the city owns the half-acre of land where the building stands. The Boy Scouts erected the ornate
building and since 1928 have leased the land from the city for a token sum of $1 a year. City officials said the market value for renting the building was about $200
,000 a year, and they invited the Boy Scouts to remain as full-paying tenants.
Jeff Jubelirer, a spokesman for the local chapter, said it could not afford $200,000
a year in rent, and that such a price would require it to cut summer-camp funds for 800 needy children.
"With an epidemic of gun violence taking the lives of children almost daily in this city
, it's ironic that this administration chose to destroy programming that services thousands of children in the city," Mr. Jubelirer said. He added that the organization
serves more than 69,000 young people, mostly from the inner city, and that its programming focuses on mentoring and after-school programs instead of camping trips.
But Stacey Sobel, executive director of Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, a gay-rights advocacy group based in Philadelphia, said: "Allowing the Boy Scouts to
use this building rent free sends a message that the city approves of their policy. We are not looking to kick the Boy Scouts out. We just want them to play by the same rules as everyone else in the city."
Ms. Sobel said the city required that any organization that rented property from it agree to nondiscriminatory language in its lease. The Boy Scouts skirted the requirement by never having had to sign a lease because they were given use of
the building by city ordinance in the 1920s.
Local scout leaders said they tried hard to find a compromise between the city and their own national office, and in 2005 they seemed poised to agree on a policy
statement adopted by the Boy Scouts in New York, which did not renounce the prohibition against gay members, but affirmed that "prejudice, intolerance and unlawful discrimination in any form are unacceptable."
But last year, city officials wrote Cradle of Liberty Council officials to say that suggested policy statement could not be reconciled with Philadelphia's antidiscrimination ordinance.
On May 31, the City Council voted 16-to-1 to authorize ending the lease, though Mr. Clarke and other Council members continued trying to negotiate a settlement. Those efforts ended this week, Mr. Clarke said, adding that he had shifted his
energy toward trying to see if there was a way the city could reimburse the group for improvements it had made to the property over the years.
Boy Scout officials said they do not have a cost estimate for the improvements, but
Mr. Jubelirer said it would exceed $5 million.
Flipping through an aged book of fund-raising encouragement for construction of the building — from dignitaries like Helen Keller, Babe Ruth and Winston Churchill
— Chuck Eaton, director of field service for the local chapter, noted how the past contrasted with the present.
In front of the building, the wording on a statue of a boy standing sentinel also marks
the passage of time. "The past is our heritage," it reads. "The present our opportunity. The future our hope."
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